Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain Heads to Television

Guillermo del Toro’s book series “The Strain” is headed to television, Deadline reports. The books, co-authored with Chuck Hogan, have been picked up by FX for adaptation into potential series. Hogan and Del Toro will co-write the pilot with Del Toro directing and executive producing. Carlton Cuse (“Lost”) will be serving as showrunner and executive producer.

The first book in the series is officially described as follows:

A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold.

In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing . . .

So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his citya city that includes his wife and sonbefore it is too late.

The original report indicates that Del Toro would like to be involved in directing the series and that it would likely be planned to a finite number of episodes from the beginning.